Don't Tell Me Who I Am
by knives4cash
Summary: Nora recalls her life in the old America.


"...And that's how I passed the B.A.R. exam," Nora dramatically finished, letting her jaw hang loose as smoke flowed out. Cigarette in hand, she tapped it against her empty beer bottle. Bits of ash fell into the Deathclaw's burnt-out eye socket, one of the many changes that one endures after taking a gatling laser to the face.

Using the hot barrel of Nora's weapon as a source of heat against the chilling dusk, Piper awkwardly shifted in her armor. "Damn, Blue... I never knew the past could be so boring."

Chuckling, Nora took another drag. Blowing a billowing cloud into the sky, she watched as the stars began to peak out. A distant howl broke her from the trance, and after a few moments she snorted. "Yeah... the old world was pretty fuckin' cruel for its time too."

The howl had grabbed Piper's attention more. A story could be written in a safer environment. "Wanna make camp? There was a good vantage point about two miles over-"

Tossing her cigarette away, Nora shook her head and slid off of the dead Deathclaw. "Nah. This is a good enough spot for me. I'll take first watch if you want."

Piper reconsidered. If it was good enough for Nora, after all. She started to unload her backpack. "If you say so."

"I do," she reaffirmed as she started to set up the cooking equipment. A crude barbeque made out of a shopping cart, and a repurposed flamer for its source. Nora couldn't be bothered to carry it for herself, so she had Piper do it for her. Nora also couldn't be bothered to cook anymore, so she made Piper do it.

Piper had, after some arguing, accepted her cards. Nora tossed her the bowie knife that had accompanied her out of Vault 111, and Piper opened up the deathclaw while Nora started to dig a pit for their fire, so as to better conceal their position and keep the wind from blowing flames into her hair. Or Piper's.

"Don't you miss it, though?" Piper had to wonder as she got suitable cuts of meat for their tiny setup. Igniting the flame, she postured, "Doesn't a bunch of questions beat getting shot? Or clawed?"

Having finished with the pit, Nora had begun to drink another beer. Setting it down, she idly scratched her nose, thinking. Huffing, she slowly shook her head. "No, I can't say I do."

Piper had guessed as much from the way Nora had described the exam, but it was still a better life to her than Diamond City. Seering their "steak", she had to ask, since Nora rarely elaborated, "What makes this time better?"

To that, Nora had to laugh. Hard. So hard, in fact, that she knocked over her beer, to which she screamed and tried to pick it back up, to which the bottle slipped out of her hands as she grasped it. It rolled down the slight hill upon which the Deathclaw had died, and Nora watched her beer, her last beer, fall into a puddle of sludge. A decomposing dog corpse accepted its free beer.

The smell of that dog was irritating to Piper, who had tried to ignore it as best as she could when getting Nora's latest story, but it was a welcome sensation for Nora.

"Fuck," she huffed before turning back to Piper. "Did you have any-"

"Haha, nooope!" she had to admit. "That's your vice, not mine!"

Grunting, Nora trudged back to Piper's backpack and sifted through the loot. "I thought we-"

"Must be confusing me with Strong," Piper deceitfully suggested. "Don't change the subject, Blue. What's so great about my world? Yours sounds amazing."

Grunting again, Nora plopped her scarred butt down on the dirt. Pulling her legs close to her chest, she guarded herself closely. "I... it... just sucked. America was a place of hypocrisy. I watched rich men pay less-rich men to blame people like me for their problems. Plus, I was born with this vagina."

Piper was a fan of that crotch, but she wasn't going to derail Nora, as that usually put an end to the story. Instead, she kept quiet and cooked.

Craning her head back, Nora smirked as she felt her neck pop with satisfaction. "See, Piper, out here we win or lose based on how big our guns are. And I guess we can ambush and stuff too, but what's important is who has the superior strength. Back in America, I was born into defeat."

"But you were American," Piper commented. Looking away from their meal for a moment, she studied Nora's grimace. "Weren't you guys the best? The leaders of the free world?"

Scoffing, she shook her head. "It was all on paper, just like our fucking Declaration of Independence. Or our Constitution. Hell, even the Bill of Rights fucking sucked. See, they all worked fine on paper, but no one really followed their rules."

"But... it was America," Piper reiterated. All her life, Piper had gotten snippets, even a lecture from one of those Minutemen on the virtues of liberty, freedom, and democracy, as it had been those principles that the Americans had proudly defied the Communist Empire that had colonised their previously unoccupied land.

"Piper, do you know what a 'nigger' is?" Nora asked.

Shaking her head, Piper guessed, "Some kind of politician?"

To that, Nora had to laugh. Not as hard this time, but it was still pretty funny to her. "I'm a nigger, Piper. Well, I was a nigger. In America. I guess I should be happy that you don't know what it is."

"Why are you a nigger?" Piper couldn't help but wonder. "I mean... no offense, Blue, we all know you're special, but we'd just call you human. Or not irradiated."

Sighing, Nora gave a rare, affectionate smile. "I like it. It's nice to see that fallout has made people more egalitarian. So, here's the thing, Piper. Your skin is white. Mine is black. And because it's black, I was a nigger."

"Oooh, like 'mayor' or 'judge'!" Piper guessed wrong. "But why were you slaves? How did slavers exist in a free society?"

Shaking her head, Nora explained, "My ancestors were enslaved, and their descendants were born into slavery. The people who bought and worked us for labor justified this by claiming that we were inferior for being black, and it took a civil war to end slavery in America. But the slave owners fought tooth and nail to keep their slaves."

"Wow!" Piper made a mental note as she added sea salt. "What was it like? Fighting in that war of independence?"

"Oh no, no that all happens centuries before me. But the thing is, we were free on paper. White people still saw my kind as inferior, and there were these three 'extremists' who tried to change that. Martin Luther King Junior in the oh-sixties. Karl Benjamin Purline was in oh-ninety-nine, and Robert Santiago was in twenty-thirty, I remember that much," Nora continued. Staring out into the wasteland, she felt sleepy all of a sudden. "Power armor came stomping into town on that last one."

"And no one considered these opposing views?" Piper couldn't believe that a representative democracy would ignore repeated requests.

"I remember being a kid, and my mom always told me to come directly home from school. Never stay out with friends, and for God's sake never be out after state curfew. People got killed for their skin color, Piper. It was fucking petty as shit. Politicians looked the other way. Speaking out lost votes. Hell, by my time the Resource Wars were starting, and I guess we got the lighter beatings in comparison, 'cause there was an expansion of liberties in the states for us."

Piper wondered about the nature of her autonomy. "But you went to law school. No offense, Blue, but didn't you have some freedom?"

Huffing, Nora growled, "That was because of Nate."

Piper held her breath. Swallowing hard, she kept her damn mouth shut.

"I met Nate by pure fuckin' chance. I was a senior in - well, I was almost a full-grown adult in school and about to go work in my mom's laundr- a place that washed clothes for people. I... bumped into Nate during a riot. Some local deputy had apparently handcuffed a 'damn nigger' to a tree for damaging his Mr. Handy and beat him to death with the butt of his plasma pistol."

Piper nodded, again making a mental note. Deputies were pre-war raiders who had held onto pre-civil war sentiments on how they should raid and take slaves.

"So my whole town was in an uproar, with the black people furious, and the white people furious that we weren't protesting the right way, and it was just a mess. I got caught up in it... I did some things... and I kind of got in trouble for it. Nate saw me as the victim, and he helped me out."

Piper turned back to the food to keep her grimace concealed. Nora had long broken eye contact.

"That's where you'd be fucked, Piper. You've got a vagina. We're women, and America was a place run by men, for men. You'd pass for white, though, so you'd be better off."

"What's so bad about being a woman!" Piper scoffed as she tested the meat's firmness. It was firm but had some give, just the way they liked it. She moved them into two pans that had been dented from combat.

Nora lazily took her food. The steaming steak received some foreplay from her fork. "Your dad tells you that you can't learn how the car works. Your mom tells you that your future husband will want a hot meal when he comes home. You need to know how to change diapers for your future babies." Staring into the dead animal, she grunted, "You're told exactly what you are and how you'll grow up to be that thing. A fucking machine serving a master."

"Why'd you go with Nate? Wasn't dating and marriage a big process?" Piper prompted as she had heartily begun to chow down, noting the excess salt.

Frowning, Nora continued to poke at her food. "I had a choice: refuse Nate or bind myself to him. He was a white man, an army man. Everywhere he went, he commanded respect from his white peers. I was a black woman, just a nigger to a lot of folks. The American dream for me was Nate."

Piper stopped. "Did... you not want Sha-"

"I didn't, not in the fucking slightest," Nora spat. "But it was what Nate wanted, so I had the fuckin' thing. I don't even think he saw me as his equal, just the poor nigger girl he saved and made love to. I... I saw him look at other women. And God only knows what he did on deployment. He could be charming, but I... I had to cook. I had to clean. He put me through law school, because he thought that was all I could do. I was just his smart slave, who fucked him when he wanted it. 'Don't ask Nora what she wants, let's just fuck!', 'I don't want your food, I ate on the base!'," she imitated, recalling those disheartening evenings and terrible nights.

"Was that a common ideal among American men?" Piper asked.

Shaking her head, Nora admitted, "It was rare. That's why I clung to him. But we both knew what was happening; people would insult Nate behind his back for 'loving' me, but they'd never dare to insult him to his face. Nate had that aura about him. It was like power armor. And for a time, I thought I loved him. But he never saw me as... as an equal."

Nora stared out into the dusk, eyes glazed and breath graveling. After a short time to think she scoffed. "When the nukes went off, I thrust that crying little shit into his arms and prayed to God that I'd be rid of both of them."

Piper sat in silence until she remembered to turn off the flamer. "I'm sorry to... well, I honestly don't know what to say, Blue." Admittedly for Piper, Blue could tell a sob story if she wanted to. This one felt more genuine.

Laughing, Nora set her food down. She moved to Piper's side and threw an arm around the reporter, who twitched with the embrace. "You don't have to say anything. Just let everyone know how much the old world sucked, alright? The old world was shit, and we shouldn't glorify it. We should know what it was, and we should fucking learn from its failures."

"A big lesson to learn," Piper commented as she laced her own arm around Blue.

Chuckling, Nora leaned in. "You wanna know something else about America?"

Piper hesitated. "I guess?"

Shoving her tongue into Piper's mouth, and ramming her hand down Piper's pants, Nora murmured, "This was illegal."


End file.
